


a candle at my chest and a hand on her knee

by paperiuni



Series: Unwritten: Codas & Interludes [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s2e20 Beside Still Water, Pre-Femslash, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 05:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14888105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: I’d stand between you and your dreams if I could.On an early morning, Izzy finds Clary working out her feelings on a punching bag. It isn't easy to protect those who fight beside you. (A coda for 2.20.)





	a candle at my chest and a hand on her knee

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from tumblr.
> 
> Written for a kiss meme prompt: _Clary x Izzy, "a kiss where it hurts"_

The dull staccato rhythm of a punching bag under assault draws Isabelle to one of the nooks of the training hall, broken off the main area for more private practice. It’s too early in the morning for the trainees, too late for sleepless regulars. The bag chain rattles as one last impact lands. There’s a curse and a hiss of pain.

She drops her eskrima sticks with a clatter and peers over the partition.

Clary’s sat on the floor, shaking her hand as if that’d scatter the pain, her boxing gloves tossed aside. Her breath is rapid and loud in the smaller space.

“You’re up early,” Izzy says, conversational. It’s been a few days of normality since Lake Lyn. Clary seems to be holding up fine. Alec filed a request for her rune ceremony with Alicante, owing a little to her status as a sudden topic of debate in the corridors of power. She’s their hero _du jour_ , of course. The killer of Valentine Morgenstern, the vanquisher of the fanatic. Never mind the light patricide it took for her to earn the title.

“Yeah,” Clary says. Her crooked French braid—self-made, clearly, and in a rush—can’t contain the wispy plenty of her hair. “Think if I put my back into it, I can sweat all the weird dreams out of me?”

“Or paste them on the punching bag and beat them senseless? That sounds more like what you were doing.” Izzy crouches, rocking back on her heels. “Bad dreams? Or just weird ones?”

“Not like the vision kind. No more underwater swords, or wheels of wings or any other angelic stuff.” Clary sounds thoughtful. She makes the sacred sound approachable in a way Izzy doesn’t quite understand but likes. To Izzy, the angels have never seemed to speak in the calcified doctrine of the Clave. If they have voices, they’re the quiet warmth of a right thing accomplished, the clear resonance of a hard choice made well.

There are those dreamy suggestions, and then there’s standing face to face with the angel Raziel. Whatever Clary’s trying to vent at the poor punching bag, she’s entitled to it, as far as Izzy’s concerned.

She might be a little biased. Nobody here to protest it.

Clary curls and uncurls her left index finger, testing its mobility. She smells of fresh sweat and her usual citrusy shampoo, still breathing a little fast. She doesn’t look much like a hero: just a girl, coltish and focused and frustrated.

“Are you gonna fix that? You can borrow my stele if you forgot yours.”

“Oh, this?” Clary looks up, wide-eyed. “I just jarred the knuckle. Bad form. I can see Alec making his frowny face at me.”

“Like he’s got time to come grumble at the trainees anymore. You’re safe.” Izzy tosses her ponytail back over her shoulder.

Not a hundred percent sure why, she waits. Shadowhunters start their training young; Clary’s got a decade of catching up to do, and she’s a fast learner, but it’s about more than weapon skills and tactics. Duty gets hammered in early—Izzy should know, the way she’s both striven endlessly for perfection and railed against parental strictures. Clary grew up a mundane: sheltered, beloved, blind.

It’s her mindset that sometimes makes Izzy want to blinker her to the worst of the Shadow World. The urge passes—to give in to it, especially now, would be to disrespect Clary’s efforts—but it always returns. It creeps over her now in a shade she’s never quite felt before.

_I’d stand between you and your dreams if I could._

“I keep telling myself I had to do it.” Clary begins unwinding the wraps around her hands. The wrinkled page where she jotted down Izzy’s instructions on how to do them up lies next to her water bottle in the corner, adorned with sketched diagrams. “Jace—he—” She sniffs, adjusts her course. “Somehow, you know, I never figured it’d come down to me. To take down my father. He manacled me while he summoned Raziel, and I kept thinking, somebody will come. You or Alec or—”

“I’m sorry,” Izzy breathes, a reflex of empathy. Clary gave a report to Alec and then to a succession of Clave officials, portaled in from Alicante, standing like ruffled stormcrows in Alec’s office. Since then she hasn’t said much about the night at Lake Lyn.

“It’s okay. We all got out of there.” Clary’s smile is like the sun through a sheen of cloud, a ghost of warmth.

“But it’s not yet out of your head.” Izzy puts a hand on her knee, light, companionable.

“I don’t regret it,” Clary says at once. There’s steel in her voice. “If I’m ever gonna be an actual Shadowhunter, I can’t regret it.”

“Clary.” Izzy tries not to sound too soft. The line between compassion and condescension is thin here. “Everyone here has nightmares sometimes. Handling the things we see and do out there is part of what makes us good Shadowhunters. Regretting some of them keeps us human. Even when there’s no other choice. Especially then.”

She’s learned this the hard way. Seen her mother almost be consumed by her singular conviction. Seen her brothers struggle between necessity and mercy, both in their way. Felt that tug of war in herself, too. It’s a lesson that goes on.

Clary exhales, tipping her head back, the delicate tendons in her neck moving as she swallows. “Okay.”

She doesn’t understand yet, Izzy knows. The seed’s been planted, and it’ll seek the sun in time.

Clary’s hand is warm in Izzy’s own. New calluses roughen her skin, from staff hafts and dagger hilts rather than a pencil or a brush. Izzy doesn’t squeeze it, mindful of her sprained knuckle. “Does it hurt?”

“A little. I think my head hurts worse, from all the thinking.” Clary puts her good hand on top of Izzy’s, bending into her space. “This made me feel better, though. You do that a lot. I don’t thank you enough.”

Her throat tight, Izzy dips down to rest her nose on the crown of Clary’s head. Her lips touch Clary’s brow, and it’s inexcusably close to a kiss, so, on a dizzying whim, she makes it one, a slow press of her mouth to the salt of Clary’s skin.

“Any time,” she whispers. Curved close, almost to the line of her body, Clary sighs like a weight’s been lifted.

**Author's Note:**

> Title with a tiny pronoun modification from "Night Terror" by Laura Marling.
> 
> I am on tumblr!


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